But we have already seen that liberty in the Protestant sense is no liberty at all, or a liberty that in the civil and political order is identified with cæsarism--the absolutism of the prince in a monarchy, the absolutism of the people or of the ruling majority for the time in a democracy. This last might be inferred from the ostracism practised in democratic Athens, and is asserted and defended, or rather taken for granted, by almost the entire secular press in democratic America. The most conservative politicians among us recognize the justice of no restrictions on the will of the people but such as are imposed by written constitutions, and which a majority or three fourths of the voters may alter at will and as they will. It is the boast of our popular orators and writers that there are with us no restrictions on the absolute will of the people but such as the people voluntarily impose on themselves, which, as self-imposed, are simply no restrictions at all. It is evident, then, if liberty means any thing, if there is any difference between liberty and despotism, freedom and slavery, the Protestant understanding of liberty is not the true one. Nor is the Protestant understanding of _religious_ liberty a whit more true. We have found that the basis or principle of all civil and political liberty is religious liberty, or the freedom and independence of religion--that is to say, the spiritual order; but from the point of view of Protestantism there is no religion, no spiritual order, to be free and independent. According to Protestantism, religion is a function, not a substantive existence or an objective reality. It is, as we have seen, on Protestant principles, a function of the state, of the community, or of the individual, and whatever liberty there may be in the case, must be predicated of one or another of these, not of religion, or the spiritual order. With Protestants the freedom and independence of religion or the spiritual order would be an absurdity, for it is precisely that which they began by protesting against. It is of the very essence of Protestantism to deny and make unrelenting war on the freedom and independence of religion, and the only liberty in the case it can assert is the freedom of the state, the community, or the individual from religion as law, and the right of one or another of them to adopt or reject any religion or none at all as they choose, which is irreligious or infidel, not religious liberty.